It is customary in many parts of the world to lay and bury pipes, such as water, gas and sewer pipelines, underground in the formation of, respectively, water, gas, and sewer systems. These underground pipelines sometimes require periodic isolation from the system, and hence are generally equipped with isolation valves. Utility valve boxes are installed in conjunction with the isolation valves to allow access to the valves. Examples of known valve boxes include U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,036,401 and 5,803,125.
There are currently a myriad of different designs of utility valve boxes. With reference to FIGS. 1 and 2, one utility valve box 10 is illustrated including a body member 11. The body member 11 surrounds a defined interior space 14. The body member 11 has an internal surface 12 extending the length of the body member 11. An inwardly directed lip or ring 16 extends into the interior space 14 from the internal surface 12. The body member 11 is bounded at one end by a covering 13 and is open at an opposing end 15. The opposing end 15 is adjacent to a valve 52 of a pipeline 50. Generally, access to the valve 52 is gained by removing the covering 13 and extending a tool through the interior space 14.
It is generally desired, however, to restrict the access to isolation valves to only those personnel authorized to perform functions in regard to those valves. Thus, it is desired that the utility valve boxes be secured to prevent unauthorized access. Several conventional lockout systems are known, such as, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,131,604 and 5,234,029. A disadvantage of the known lockout systems is that none of them is adapted to restrict access to utility valve boxes having an inwardly directed ring, such as the valve box 10.